Monday, October 29, 2007

this refers slightly back to what someone else had previously posted about the local popularity of social networking sites. as i've mentioned before in class, i've been using cyworld for quite a time now but i had to use a friend's korean citizen registration number (which i don't have because i'm korean american). it's interesting to think that these imagined communities have very defined borders, or at least they attempt to set the boundaries by making korean minihompies inaccessbile to u.s. ones, vice versa. because koreans and americans use essentially different versions of cyworld, you can only "neighbor" a korean cy if you are a korean cy user and if you have a u.s. cy, like all of us have in class, we cannot be 'neighbors' with koreans. this was troubling and difficult for me because of the issue of 'security' that boyd brings up in her piece. for me to acquire a korean version of cyworld where i can type in korean, add korean songs and network with my korean friends, i had to send a scanned or xeroxed copy of my american passport and send it as an attachment to cyworld. this made me incredibly uncomfortable, sending my passport info online just to join an online social networking site. still, it bothered me because i was in high school and i wanted a cy dammit, lol ^^;;anyway, i strayed a lot from where i was starting but this made me really question, what are the limits of socializing on these popular so-called global websites when it comes to formation of a community? does it matter if these communities exclude people? can that be considered unjust?